by Maggie Bloom
The results of a pregnancy test are available in only two minutes, a fact that seems implausible at best. Such potentially life-altering news should require a day to process, at minimum. Preferably a week. Maybe even forever.
I press my ear to the door, just to be sure no one is headed my way. Then, when I’m satisfied the coast is clear, I dip the stick into the pee and pray.
Negative, negative, negative, negative. Negative, negative, negative, neg—
Holy shit! Something’s happening! A line is forming! Frig, where did I put the…?
Negative, negative, negative, negative.
I locate the directions and flip to the “results” chart, which I study until I conclude that the line I now see, as big and bold as a Vegas marquee, is the “control” line, representing nothing more than a usable test. If another line forms parallel to the control line (this one’s the “test” line)…congratulations, you’re expecting.
I’m staring at that damn control line and, more importantly, the line-free space beside it, with so much force I feel as if my eyeballs may drop out of my head. But nothing’s happening. Not even the faintest hint of parallelism. And it sure as hell seems like my two minutes are up.
For certainty’s sake, I count to one-hundred in my head, then compare my test to the results chart.
Still no parallel line, meaning…
I AM NOT PREGNANT!!!!
If this bathroom weren’t so small, I’d break out in a dance routine right here. Instead, I settle for grinning hopelessly at myself in the mirror, as if I’ve accomplished something extraordinary by avoiding the p-word. I mean, really? Kids my age shouldn’t even have to deal with this kind of thing.
Even though part of me wants to mount and frame this test stick, I set about concealing it (and its box and instructions) in a cocoon of toilet paper that I leave behind on the counter as I get the shower running. I’ve just started stripping down when I hear a high-pitched squeal.
It’s Denise, and the way she’s shrieking has me convinced she’s spotted a mouse (or some comparably eek-worthy rodent). I hike my pants back over my hips, flip the shower controls off, and peek my head out the bathroom door (after I relocate the bleach, of course). “What?” I shout. “Are you guys okay?”
Denise comes bouncing into the hall with the enthusiasm of a SuperBall. “Look! Look!” she screeches, flailing her hand at my face.
I have about a zero chance of understanding her unless she calms down. “Hey, hey,” I say, reaching my hand out and grabbing her wrist. “Chill for a sec.”
She’s now moved on to some crazy pogo-stick maneuver that makes her appear as if she’s about to wet herself. “Look!” she demands once again.
I tighten my grip on her arm, freeze her hand in midair, inches off the tip of my nose. “Is this…?” I ask, finally noticing the speck of a diamond ring she’s so proudly flaunting.
She smiles the happiest smile I’ve ever seen. “Uh-huh,” she says with an eager nod.
Orv slips into the hallway but hangs back, looking sheepish and saying nothing.
“Oh my God!” I blurt, nearly as stunned as Denise. “And…?”
“Yes!” she squeaks. “I said yes, of course!”
I risk a step into the hall, followed by a shoulder squeeze (me to Denise) that leads to a full-on bear hug (Denise to me). “Congrats,” I say into her ear. And then I start to cry.
* * *
At seven o’clock last night, a wrecker backed up to the Royale, winched it off the driveway and, with a bounce and a clunk, ferried it away. It was the first time I’d truly dissolved since we lost Gramp. Now we’ve lost his Sweet Baby Bluey too.
Denise has cobbled together a series of lifts to and from Welcome Home that takes a three-page spreadsheet to keep track of. Today is a Tuesday, which means she walks two blocks home from Winchester Street, where Jessica Smart, the graveyard med tech, is willing to drop her off. When she slogs into the kitchen, I can’t help noticing that a bit of the newly-engaged sheen she’s been sporting these last few days has worn off.
“There’s a load of laundry in the washer,” I inform her as I down the remainder of my orange juice and wiggle my backpack over my shoulders. “It wasn’t done in time for me to switch it over.” I’ve always tried to pitch in around here, but now that Denise is gone an extra two hours a day, I’ve had to up my game.
She gives a little sigh as she brushes imaginary crumbs off the edge of the counter. “All right.”
“I’ll do another load when I get home,” I tell her, since things are really starting to pile up around here. A stack of dishes even sat in the sink overnight, one of Denise’s Seven Deadly No-Nos. “Harvey gave me today and tomorrow off, ‘in honor of my birthday.’ ”
Denise works up a smile. “What kind of cake do you want?” she asks. “I can have Orv stop and pick up a mix this afternoon.”
If I had to guess what’s eating at Denise, I’d say it’s something to do with her medical condition and the fact that she can’t carry a baby. With a wedding now on the horizon, she must be feeling even more hopeless about the prospect of her and Orv starting a family. “Anything chocolate,” I say. “Or strawberry. Lemon would be good too.”
“Not vanilla?”
If I don’t get out of here right now, I’m going to be late for school. “Nah,” I say with a quick shake of my head. I make a break for the door. “Too boring.” Vanilla is actually my favorite (for cake anyway), but Denise doesn’t like it. And the fruit flavors are for Orv.
chapter 13
MY BIRTHDAY started with a low-key breakfast at Pablo’s with Marie, Duncan, and cranky little Roy (honestly, I’m shocked my parents had the wherewithal to haul themselves out of bed at such an ungodly hour, bundle the baby up, and trek all the way to Industry to fetch me, just to take an about-face back to Hollyhock—and Pablo’s—after which, they drove me to school). Who needs birthday presents (instead of a gift, Marie and Duncan paid to have a tree planted in my name in the rainforest) when your parents actually bother to act like you exist?
When school lets out, Tom meets me by the bike rack, which I’ve wandered over to despite the fact that I’m without the Schwinn. His eyes light up when he sees me. “I thought you skipped today or something,” he says, a note of surprise in his voice. “Why weren’t you at lunch?”
“Harvey,” I say with a gentle roll of my eyes. “He ambushed me.” In reality, what Harvey did was excuse me from school for three periods (as the former principal, he retains such power based on nothing more than a wink and a nod), during which time we scarfed down a couple of cheeseburgers and took in a movie at the five-dollar theater on the outskirts of town (Rango, if you must know).
Tom is growing the cutest shadow of a moustache, which looks sublime against his honey-colored skin (he’s one-sixteenth Peruvian Indian). To me, though, he resembles a hot, young Mexican gunslinger. “Can I walk you home?” he asks, stepping aside so the rest of the bicycle-riding students can clear out.
“Sure,” I say. As my boyfriend (he hasn’t told me otherwise, so I’ve disregarded what Wilma said and decided that Tom and I are, in fact, meant to be), he doesn’t really have to ask, although I appreciate his courtesy.
He pulls the BMX out of the bike rack. “You know what I was thinking about today?” he says as we slip off Industry High grounds.
“No. What?” I say, figuring he may be referring to something birthday-related, since today is the day. I chew at the inside of my cheek as I await the reveal.
“Remember in fourth grade, in Mr. Yeager’s class?” he says. “When we went to Owakini Springs?”
For some reason this makes me smile, then laugh. “Not really,” I say. “Wawakini?”
He slows his enunciation. “Ow-a-kini. It’s Native American,” he says. “We took a fieldtrip a few weeks before the end of school. My mom chaperoned.”
When he mentions his mother, I get a familiar little stabbing pain in my chest that sometimes comes on when I think about
Gramp, which seems to happen less and less frequently since Marie and Duncan wedged themselves back into my life.
I squint. “Not ringing a bell. Sorry.” I say, “What about it, though?”
He stops his bike a second. “You really don’t remember?”
I want to remember, mostly because he seems so pained about my not being able to. “Was that…” I say, pausing to buy my brain cells a few extra moments of concentration, “…the place with the water?” I hope I’m not misinterpreting the word springs, or I may end up looking like a fool here.
He starts rolling his bike along again. “Yup,” he says. “It’s a lake. A manmade one. Remember, they had picnic tables and a volleyball net and those built-in grills? We had a cookout.”
I have the vaguest sense of having experienced something like what he describes. “Sounds sort of familiar,” I admit. “But I’m not totally clear.” I frown. “Sounds fun, though,” I add, hoping this is the recognition he’s angling for.
He stops the BMX again, this time abruptly. “Fun?!”
Now I’m confused. I shrug and say, “Well, not the whole thing, of course. But some of it was okay, wasn’t it?” I find that vague lies with lots of gray area work best.
“Until you almost died,” he tells me bluntly, “and I saved you.”
I can’t make eye contact with him, because I’m not sure if he’s joking. “Huh?”
“You weren’t a very good swimmer,” he says. “Are you any better now?”
“I don’t know,” I say, realizing that the only time my body has contacted water (other than in the shower, of course) was at Tom’s pool party last year. And all I did then was dangle my legs in.
We continue walking. “I think you thought that, uh, ‘cause…” he says, stumbling over what he wants to say. “Malcolm Gates told you fat people float, like whales. He said you should go out deeper, even though the teachers told us to stay inside the ropes. He called you something too. A crybaby? A fraidy cat? Something like that.”
A sick feeling bubbles in my stomach. “Then what?”
He stares into the distance. “I’ve sort of blocked it out too,” he says. “But not all the way. If I try, I can still remember. Sometimes I dream about it.”
“Fourth grade wasn’t that long ago,” I say, implying that our recalls our deficient. “It couldn’t’ve been that bad, right?”
His eyes well, and I get an ominous feeling that whatever happened to Tom and me nearly six years ago was that bad and worse. “When I got to you, you weren’t moving or breathing,” he says. “It wasn’t like on TV. It was bad. I didn’t think I was going to be able to…” His voice does a hiccupping thing that takes the place of a sob. “The teachers didn’t even know what was happening until I got you back inside the ropes, and then one of them started screaming. I was screaming in my head, but on the outside, all I could do was shake.” Softly he repeats, “I couldn’t stop shaking.”
As he describes the scene, it flickers through my mind like a snowy black-and-white home movie. Only I must be imagining, not remembering, since, if Tom is to be believed (which, of course, he is), then I was unconscious for a large portion of what transpired. “What made you think of that?” I ask, feeling an odd compulsion to apologize for events I only barely recall.
He clears his throat and smiles at me, melting my heart. “Your birthday,” he says. “I was glad you’re still here.” A look of recognition dawns across his face. “Oh, yeah,” he says, stopping once again, this time laying the BMX in the grass and slinging his backpack off his shoulder. “I’ve got something for you.”
I watch curiously as he fumbles with a stuck zipper, rearranges a stack of spiral notebooks and eventually comes out with something thin and flat, roughly square-shaped and covered in overlapping funny papers and Scotch tape. “Here,” he says, passing the item to me. “Happy Birthday.”
The closest thing to a present I’ve ever gotten from a boy is one of those vending machine trinkets Brent Flynn slides my way after he screws me. This kind of gift feels much nicer. “Should I open it now?” I ask hesitantly.
“Definitely,” says Tom. “I want to see what you think.”
I ease a fingertip under a loose edge of the newsprint (it seems as if he’s wrapped the gift this way on purpose, for my opening pleasure), then drag the finger along until one whole side of the paper is gaping. The record basically falls into my hand. “Jesus Christ,” I can’t stop myself from saying, even though it’s probably an inappropriate reaction to such a thoughtful gesture. “Your mom’s song?”
He beams proudly. “The one she sang to my dad, on his birthday,” he reminds me. “I thought maybe we could start a new tradition…or, well…continue their old one.”
He plans to serenade me with a ditty about fat bottomed girls? Bring it on. “All right,” I say. “Why not?”
He digs into his pocket and wiggles out a folded piece of notebook paper (the lyrics), which he unravels. “Don’t laugh,” he says, holding the paper up to his face. “I only had a day to rehearse.”
I try but fail to suppress a giddy grin. “You have my word,” I say. To prove the point, I sweep an invisible cross over my heart.
He shakes his head, as if even he disbelieves what he’s about to do. But he does it anyway. With a faltering voice and a gaze too self-conscious to meet mine, he stammers out one line and then another. Once he’s settled into a comfortable rhythm, he rolls right through the chorus.
I’m impressed. And flattered. Not just by the song, which extols the virtues of big girls like me, but by Tom’s willingness to share something so personal. His singing voice, while a bit off-key, still has enough of a raspy twang to give me the shivers.
The moment his lips stop moving, I break out in applause. “That was awesome!” I say. “I loved it!”
He wrinkles his nose. “You sure?”
This boy is getting a kiss right now. I hang my arms around his waist, tip my face up and gingerly press my mouth to his. His arms tense as they meet behind my bottom. After a while, I take a breath and say, “Positive.”
“Huh?”
“I’m positive,” I repeat. “You were great.” My eyebrows pull together. “You’re gonna do that again next year?” I ask. “And the year after that?”
“That’s the idea.”
He presses into me, and I feel the same tightness in his pants that cropped up last time we came across his mother’s record (what can I say? I guess all that singing about fat bottoms turns people on).
Which reminds me…
I bring my lips to his ear and tell him, “I used the test, by the way. It was negative.”
His whole body relaxes, except that stiff zipper, which seems as if it has mated with my drawstring pants. Almost inaudibly he says, “Good.”
* * *
Gramp’s house has the aroma of cake when Tom and I arrive. Strawberry, if I’m not mistaken (which I’m quite sure I’m not, a lifetime of gluttony having fine tuned my nose like a piano virtuoso’s ear).
I bomb into the kitchen, but Tom hesitates at the threshold behind me, one foot in and one foot out. When I notice he’s lagging, I call back, “Come on.”
Gramp’s old ramshackle house isn’t much to look at (in fact, it’s better to avoid looking, lest you run across another home improvement project to tack on to the ever-expanding to-do list), but Tom is welcome anyway.
He drags the screen door shut and belatedly trails me into the living room, where Denise hunches over a rickety metal tray table (one of Gramp’s rusty-around-the-edges garage sale finds) dropping change into a coin sorter and rolling the cash into neat stacks. A quick glance reveals that she’s scrounged up twenty-seven dollars.
For a second I feel embarrassed about Tom seeing how poor we are, but then I just hope Denise hasn’t bought me anything for my birthday. The cake is more than enough.
Denise spots me out of the corner of her eye and says, “There’s the birthday girl.” Her gaze lingers on Tom as she awaits an
introduction.
“It smells delicious in here,” I say. Bluntly I add, “Where’s the cake?” I’d expected to find it on the kitchen table as we passed, but the confection was suspiciously absent.
Denise presses a pile of nickels into a paper roll. “In the fridge. I thought we’d save it until Orv gets home,” she says. “But now that you’ve got company…”
“Oh, this is Tom,” I say with a nonchalant wave. “He’s helping me train for the Yo-Yo.” I draw a quick breath. “Tom, this is my…” I stop myself from introducing Denise as my mother and puzzle through her relation to me. “…my soon-to-be cousin-in-law? She’s marrying my cousin, Orv.”
“Nice to meet you,” says Tom.
“My pleasure.”
I can see Denise’s point about the cake, but it is my birthday. And I doubt Tom’s going to stick around for another three hours just to get a taste. “I don’t think I can wait,” I say, giving Denise a begging/pouting face, the way dogs sometimes do. “Mind if we cut a couple of slices now?”
She pinches the ends of the nickel roll and adds it to the stack. “Well, if you must,” she says with a shrug and a sly smile, “but make sure you get me a piece too.”
“Aye-aye,” I promise with a goofy salute.
Tom and I head back to the kitchen, which amounts to retracing six or seven steps, since this house is so compact. I shimmy the cake out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter amidst the scent of bleach. (Denise must have gone on a cleaning binge once she finished baking.)
“Need any help?” Tom asks as I stare hopelessly into the silverware drawer for an appropriate knife.
“I don’t think so,” I reply, my eyes pinching together in concentration. I shuffle through the mixed-up forks and spoons until I come across a stubby, flat-bladed Japanese knife Orv bought off some late-night infomercial. “Bingo,” I say with a bit too much glee.
